


Reliving

by brecht



Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Romance, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Past Underage Sex, Season/Series 03, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 06:50:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20738006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brecht/pseuds/brecht
Summary: “I missed you,” he confides.She could say I know, or I’m sorry, or I missed you too, or I missed you more, or I miss you still.





	Reliving

A week after Mark finally comes home Joan still can’t sleep. Which is bullshit. She’d had five years to get used to knowing he was in trouble every second of every day, and now she can’t get her brain to hold onto the idea that he’s finally safe and she’s allowed to stop worrying.

She’s laying in bed, staring up at the ceiling and internally debating the merits of walking down the hall just to triple check that he hasn’t managed to disappear on her again when the hinges on her bedroom door creak and the line of light slipping in from the hallway widens a few inches.

She turns her head and finds Mark’s silhouette peering into her room from the hallway, thank God.

“I’m awake,” she says.

“Sorry,” Mark says, voice low like there’s anyone else in the house to wake up. “I didn’t mean to—I just—”

“Couldn’t sleep?” Joan sighs. “Yeah, my neither. Come here.” 

He shuts the door behind him, cutting off the light completely, and crawls under the covers beside her. She moves over to give him enough room but he follows, wrapping an arm around her middle and burying his face in her chest. 

It’s…not more intimate than the dozen hugs they’ve shared in the past week, except that it’s usually her face against his chest. He probably doesn’t mean anything by it, no matter how it makes her blood start pumping in ways it had almost forgotten over the years.

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. _ Put it out of your mind, Joanie. _

She gently pets his hair a few times, soothingly, the way she used to when he was a kid, when thunderstorms or nightmares would send him scurrying into her bed in fear. 

“I missed you,” he confides. 

She could say I know, or I’m sorry, or I missed you too, or I missed you more, or I miss you still. 

She elects to duck her head and press an inadequate kiss to the top of his head.

There’s a moment of stillness, nothing but the steady movement of her hand in his hair. She thinks that might be enough to soothe him to sleep, but then he shifts, tilts his head up and presses an echoing kiss to the underside of her jaw.

Her hand pauses.

Another kiss against her neck, this one open-mouthed at the spot he’d learned could make her shudder with warmth before either of them had ever met the phrase “erogenous zone”. She can’t help but lean into it, even as her legs press together of their own volition.

“Is this alright?” he asks, broadly. 

_ This._

“Of course,” she says. 

What would she deny him, after everything? Certainly not something she’s given him so many dozens of times before.

She shifts again, rolling more fully onto her back and spreading her legs so he can slot his thigh between them and press up against her as he kisses her again, just there. She lets herself gasp with it this time. Her fingers tighten in his hair. She doesn’t mean to pull him up—and maybe she doesn’t, maybe he goes by his own choice—but he surges up and kisses her properly, sucking at her bottom lip and sliding his tongue past her teeth to lick at the roof of her mouth. She keeps one hand tight in his hair, and lets the other drift down to rest on his back, holding him close. 

And just like that they’re rocking against each other, fully clothed in the dark, under the covers like they’re expecting someone to interrupt any second. Like they’re teenagers again, fumbling with the minutes of free time they can catch in her dorm room when he comes to stay over the weekend and her roommates are gone to dinner. 

That’s an awful thought, even if it’s not an unpleasant sensation. She doesn’t want to push—shouldn’t push, hadn’t been planning on asking anything of him to the day they die, considering her debts—but she’ll be damned if her penance has to include necking quietly in a house she fucking owns. 

Joan pulls her leg out from between his so she can wrap herself entirely around his hips and rock into him properly, feeling his length rub along her center despite the layers between them. She tilts her head back and guides him on purpose this time, back down until his lips find her neck again. She doesn’t so much gasp as let herself moan with the pleasure of his warmth pressed all against her front, and the texture of his tongue on her skin. 

God, she missed this. 

He doesn’t ask again, just mutters “Hang on—fuck,” as he crawls down her body, taking off her shorts and panties as he goes. She never even got a chance to see what he was wearing in the dark, but when he settles back between her legs she doesn’t feel anything but his bare skin. She reaches out, semi-blindly, and catches his wrist right before he presses a finger deep into her. 

He’s too bony in her grip, skinny in a way three months on the road hadn’t healed and she secretly fears nothing ever will, but she pushes that out of her mind and focuses on the twist of his wrist before he draws out and then presses back in with two fingers this time, stretching her open in a way that still feel practiced.

The last time they’d done this—or, not this exactly, but the last time they’d fucked in this bed, in this house—he’d cajoled her into tying his wrists to the headboard. She’d fucked him from behind like he’d asked, moving her hips carefully until the strap-on pressed against that sweet spot that made him moan out her name like a curse word, and then rubbing against it relentlessly until he came untouched. He’d mindlessly tugged at his restraints so hard it had occurred to her they’d likely break the furniture one of these days.

They hadn’t gotten the change then, and they’re certainly not going to tonight, not with the way Mark takes both of her hands in his and laces their fingers together as he slowly pushes inside her. 

It makes sense that it would be different. Last time, this had been something they’d done for fun. They’d been relieving stress and passing the time on an unseasonably warm Sunday morning. It had been as casual and easy as every other ritual they’d made up as kids and carried together into adulthood. 

There’s something like desperation in this now. It’s not quite life-affirming sex, but it’s in that vein. Not _ I thought you were dead, _but verging on _ I thought I would never see you again_. It’s five years of panic and loneliness and aching all pushed together in these movements that felt impossible last week and feel inevitable now.

And _ fuck _it’s good.

It’s that side of painful, neither of them patient enough for a prep job thorough enough to make up for how long it’s been since Joan had done anything like this—but that’s part of what makes it good. She wants to feel it hard enough tonight to know she’ll keep feeling it for days. She wants to carry the soreness as proof of his touch for as long as she can. 

He fucks her slow and deep, but even that pace quickly becomes hard for him to maintain given his shot stamina. She loops an arm around the back of his neck, pulling him into a dirty kiss and holding him close enough that it’s almost easy to roll them over so she’s on top. Flat on his back, breath half knocked out of him, Mark makes a sound nearly like a laugh that cuts into a moan when she grinds her hips down, exploring the new angle that lets him fit even deeper inside her.

“Anyone—fuck, Joanie—anyone ever tell you you’re kind of controlling?” he says. 

“Never,” she replies, almost straight-faced; he’d called her bossy at least once as week since he was twelve. 

He does laugh now, and the sound slices into her chest. She’d nearly forgotten what he sounded like when he was like this—joyful, almost giddy, all curled up in her like there was nothing else in the world beside them and all the ways they were tangled together. 

Mark digs his nails into the skin of her hips just hard enough to draw blood, to leave the curved cuts he knows she’ll love to see and feel in the morning.

It’s a dozen reassurances: I'm real, I’m here, I’m not leaving, I remember you, I know you, I won’t let you forget. 

Maybe it could even be: I love you, I love you, I love you.


End file.
